I'm very embarrassed ... ... to confess that after using BTP for over a year, that I've been cheating. That's right; I've been skipping stuff all this time because I just found it too hard to figure out and too easy to work around. But now I want to be a good boy and try to do it correctly, but I just can't figure it out myself and I need some help.

What have I been skipping? Everything in the schedule after mash-in!!! I've used BTP to calculate the amount and temperature of strike water, and I just do single-step mashes because I was either too dumb or too lazy to work hard enough to figure things out for a complicated schedule. When I would drain my first runnings, I would use a thin metal ruler to measure how many inches (2" = 1 gallon in my pots) of wort I had, subtract from what I want in the kettle, and then divide that in half to use for each batch-sparge times two.

Anyway, now that version 9-a has been released with new and improved schedule steps for fly and batch sparging, I made up my mind to try to finally get this figured out without going back to college. But no cigar for me! I just frustrated the hell out of myself, and if I keep going my wife is going to force me to stop homebrewing because of my sailor's language. Now I know that most of you experienced brewers have figured this out; could someone please post a step by step narration of what you do to create a single-infusion schedule ending with runnings, batch sparge 1, and batch sparge 2? I have to go to a city council meeting in a few minutes, so I'll continue with this thread later.

Bill, I'm in the same boat as you. I never could figure out the mashing schedule no matter what I tried. That was a huge part of my frustration with BTP. I haven't even tried the new version yet -- too busy at work and home, plus I'm not really in the mood to get frustrated again trying to figure out a bunch of stuff that my simple little spreadsheet does for me without fussing.

This is looking like an alarming trend, I too have thrown up my hands in frustration when it comes to using the mash scheldule tool. I can never seem to get past the mash in stage without weird numbers being thrown back at me. I have tried the new batch sparge schedule but it makes no difference.

I have no doubt that this is not a program error but more the operator not being able to get his head around the procedures that beertools pro uses.

I think a step by step guide to setting up a batch sparge schedule would be greatly appreciated.

Also, the use of quarts and gallons in any walkthrough would be less than useless to us metric users, so if it's possible a metric one as well would be great.

andrewqld wrote:Also, the use of quarts and gallons in any walkthrough would be less than useless to us metric users, so if it's possible a metric one as well would be great.

Well... They're made exactly the same except that the units are changed. I won't need to use any unit specific info. If you get stuck on a step, let me know, and I'll try to get you through it.

I just sat down with the new schedule tools while watching TV, so I might have missed something, but it seems pretty straight forward (easy for me to say... Jeff and Lathe taught me how to do this for the first version):

1. Start with a clean schedule. I found that steps remaining from a previous edition led to strange behavior. Maybe that's what's causing people trouble.

2. Make a grain bill and set your volumes in the main screen, so that you know what your target Kettle Volume is.

3. Add a "Mash In" step, by option-clicking on the schedule field. Select your calibrated Mash Vessel, Heating Vessel, and Heat Source, or the temperatures will not be calculated correctly (the mash tun calibration is the only real crucial one, I'd think). Enter your Target Temp (mash temp), Grist Temp, and Infusion Rate. The rest will be calculated except for the time you take to Equalize the temperature. Hit OK.

4. Create a "Rest", and choose your Mash Time, the Final Temp represents the temp at the end of the mash. Hit OK. You can drag items in the schedule if they appear out of sequence.

Nice Eric, thanks for taking the time to type all that out, I am going to sit down tonight and seriously go through your setup step by step. I will let you know tommorrow if it works out (I am sure it will).

Sorry, Bill, I realized that I really wrote that for 1 sparge, not 2. Primarily, you need to change the 1/2 Kettle Vol Mashout in step 5 to 1/3, hit the "+" twice in step 6a, and change the 1/2 in step 6b to 1/3. Then, just do step 6b twice.

I hope this helps. It really is one of those things you need to work through once or twice, then it becomes pretty intuitive. And, like I said, set it up once and most of the work is done for all your recipes. You'll just need to tweak mash temperatures and volumes, mostly, after that.

sloth I think the volume takes into account the temp of the collected wort because the kettle volume in the recipe designer is based on 212 F so my runnings is always a little lower in the mash schedule. Maybe Jeff can confirm.

jawbox wrote:sloth I think the volume takes into account the temp of the collected wort because the kettle volume in the recipe designer is based on 212 F so my runnings is always a little lower in the mash schedule. Maybe Jeff can confirm.

Lee

The total runoff lock checkbox locks the value to the kettle volume as it would be at the runoff temperature and without any boil additions. If there are any boil added ingredients such as extracts and sugars, these are subtracted from the runoff volume so that when they are added to the boil the correct kettle volume will be achieved.

jeff wrote:The total runoff lock checkbox locks the value to the kettle volume as it would be at the runoff temperature and without any boil additions. If there are any boil added ingredients such as extracts and sugars, these are subtracted from the runoff volume so that when they are added to the boil the correct kettle volume will be achieved.

Cool! I hadn't discovered this yet.
That'll make the procedure even easier than I described.

I've been fairly successful at using the mash schedule. What I've been trying to do lately is setup the various schedules (fly or batch at various rest temperatures, times, and steps) as templates and then loading the appropriate template for the new recipe or change to an old recipe. It works pretty slick. Now if I can just control all of the variables outside of the software such exact temperatures, timing, and equipment failures I'd be really doing great.

Eric, I followed your instructions and created a schedule that seems to work (http://tinyurl.com/yrp27n for anyone who wants to look at it). I've also saved it as a template which will make things easier in the future.

There are still some things that are throwing me off a bit, which is probably part of the reason for my past frustration and never actually completing a schedule because they weren't making sense. Some seem to be intermittent, and some are persistent. Some problems were also due to wrong assumptions because there isn't any documentation to make things clear -- such as my assumption that the BTP schedule would somehow match the target volume or vice versa, but I see from your comments that users just need to play with the schedule to manually try to get close to their target.

An intermittent problem that I had was that I was at a point were the schedule looked good, and then I used 'edit' for my 'rest' and all I did was change the name to 'Saccarification Rest' and then when I hit Okay, the Mash Out line turned red like something was wrong in it. When I clicked on one of the arrows for one of the values, it fixed itself. Haven't been able to repeat the error, but then again I didn't have time to try it more than a couple times.

A persistent problem (inexplicable inconsistency) is with the 'In Vessel' volume; as you can see if you'll look at my screen shot, although I added only 2 gallons of strike water, BTP indicates that I have 2.76 gallons 'In Vessel'. I don't know if that is the equivalent volume at a different temp, but it seems too large to me to be explained by that; if it is, then BTP needs to explain that to users to reassure them so they won't keep scratching their head. The discrepancy carries through and repeats at Mash Out; only a 1.4 gallon infusion is added to 2.0 gallons of strike water for a total of 3.4 gallons of water, but BTP shows an 'In Vessel' volume of 4.2 gallons. And whenever I see a figure like that which doesn't make sense, it makes me think that I've done something wrong, and I would keep playing around with the schedule at that point instead of moving on. Well, in setting this up this time, I just ignored everything as I followed your instructions.

Finally, I think the previous screens which also had 'residual' volume or something like that, as if I would leave some undrained portion in the tun, also made it a little more unnecessarily complicated with just contributed more to my consternation. Fortunately, that has been fixed with the new screens, and the ability to change values with the up/down arrows instead of having to open edit screens also makes it a heck of a lot easier to tweak it.

billvelek wrote:A persistent problem (inexplicable inconsistency) is with the 'In Vessel' volume; as you can see if you'll look at my screen shot, although I added only 2 gallons of strike water, BTP indicates that I have 2.76 gallons 'In Vessel'. I don't know if that is the equivalent volume at a different temp, but it seems too large to me to be explained by that; if it is, then BTP needs to explain that to users to reassure them so they won't keep scratching their head. The discrepancy carries through and repeats at Mash Out; only a 1.4 gallon infusion is added to 2.0 gallons of strike water for a total of 3.4 gallons of water, but BTP shows an 'In Vessel' volume of 4.2 gallons. And whenever I see a figure like that which doesn't make sense, it makes me think that I've done something wrong, and I would keep playing around with the schedule at that point instead of moving on. Well, in setting this up this time, I just ignored everything as I followed your instructions.

After using your walk through I am now able to use the mash schedule tool without any problems, even to the point of making up an 8 step mash schedule with a final batch sparge.
Thanks for clearing up my misconceptions.